Windsor Castle, Winter 1439
Windsor Castle, Winter
HE IS EVERYWHERE at Windsor this Christmas feast. He does not call the king his stepson, but anyone can see how trustingly the young king looks to him, and how steadily and lovingly Owen serves him.
We are together in the king’s presence almost all day, every day.
He keeps out of my way, but he does it gracefully and without attracting notice.
It just happens that when I walk into a room, he is always at the back, half-hidden by others.
When the men step up to take a partner for dancing, he is always engaged with some other woman; he never looks in my direction.
If I join a circle dance where the steps of the dance would bring us hand to hand and face to face, he withdraws and calls another man to take his place, as if he has just remembered that he must be elsewhere.
He does it all so easily and so lightly that I am the only one who notices.
It is a silent, unremarked agony to me. We used to choose our places in the circle dances so that when the music stopped, we would be together, hands clasped, his warm arm around my waist. We would whisper an agreement to meet; or at the very least we would brush, his lip to my cheek, my forehead to his chin; or I would step forward and flick my fingers against his body to feel his delicious hardness and know that he wanted me.
This is the castle where we fell in love, where he said he would revel in me, where he said he would give a fortune for one night with me.
It is not that I want his desire; I am constant in vengeful hatred – but something in me dies when he is so gracefully, so smilingly apart, always keeping half a dozen people between us or leaving a room when I enter.
After a few days of his tactful avoidance, I shrink from entering a room where he might be, and I stop dancing altogether.
If he was afraid of me, or if he hated me for my cruelty to his wife and for my enmity to him, I would have taken a pleasure in forcing him to acknowledge me.
Every morning, walking into Prime, I would have paused beside him until he bowed to me.
I would have taken a nearby place in the circle dances to force him to take my hand.
But he never shows any resentment; he simply seems not to see me, and while he is pleasantly, smilingly blind to me, I feel that I am disappearing.
The man I adored looks through me to the world beyond me, and I feel as if I am invisible.
The courteous attention of my husband means nothing.
Everyone thinks we are a loving and devoted couple, but Owen Tudor knows how my colour rises when I am well-loved, how my face softens and my eyes grow bright.
He can see that I work for Humphrey’s interests, that marriage is a business to me.
Owen can tell at a glance that I care nothing for Humphrey.
I am greedy for his wealth and power, glad that he defers to me as the quicker-witted leader of us two; but I have never ever felt desire for him – and it is bitter to me that Owen Tudor will see this without looking, and understand this without wasting any of his time thinking about me.
As the man I adored looks away from me, strolls out of a room talking to someone else when I walk in, mounts his horse and rides out with the court, always out of sight behind me or far away in front, I think that my very nature as a woman is dying inside me.
When he stands back for me to come through a door, his eyes are on the threshold as if I am a ghost passing by; his courteous bow is to empty air.
I wake every morning to a long, nagging ache, like an old wound bleeding sluggishly, and at first I wonder what is wrong with me – and then I remember: I will see him today, but he will not see me.
As the long days of Christmas drag on, I am even glad of this dull pain.
When it has gone altogether, I will be nothing but a pale raised scar, a dry heart.
My heart was broken by this man, and now his indifference is draining me of my life force.
I don’t know what sort of woman I will be when my grief is quite gone.
I am never going to be able to conceive a child with this deadness in my body and my soul.
My courses still come, as if they are the last sticky blood from a wound deep inside.
When I watch Owen Tudor, shadowed by grief for the loss of his wife but always cheerful and friendly to all the court but me, I wish I were as dead as her.
I think it would almost be worth being dead like her if he had loved me passionately and held me in his arms at my death, and now mourned me and remembered me every day.
I would almost rather be a dead wife than a half-forgotten lover, walking this world with soundless steps.
To everyone else but Owen, we are the most glamorous, beautiful, and successful royal couple. I am the king’s most beloved woman friend, like a mother to him, and now I am the only royal woman at court. I live in the queen’s rooms and sleep in her gold enamelled bed.
The king gives me a brooch crafted like a golden garter set with diamonds as if to remind everyone that I hold the greatest honour in England, the Order of the Garter.
All the Christmas season he is smiling and obedient to my husband, but he never chooses to spend time with Humphrey; he never seeks him out.
It is obvious to the whole world that he obeys his uncle out of duty but he chooses to be with Owen for love.
And as the long days of the winter feast go on, we are more and more afraid of what we cannot know: what Owen Tudor has told the king about us.
I am sure that he has said nothing against me, for the king kisses my cheeks when he greets me and asks for my blessing when he withdraws for the night.
But the king is more and more awkward with my husband and nervous when they disagree.
He is never defiant, but his eyes slide away, and then he shuffles off.
He prefers the company of Edmund Beaufort, his uncle the cardinal, and the new favourite, William de la Pole.
‘They’re talking about making peace with France,’ the royal tutor John Somerset reports.
Our private council – the two chaplains, the king’s tutor, and our philosopher Bolingbroke – are seated at my dining table in the queen’s rooms. I have sent my ladies-in-waiting into my privy chamber to sew.
‘He’s talking about releasing the Duc d’Orléans.
The first step towards peace with France. ’
‘My brother the late king ordered that the duke should never be released until the war was over!’ Humphrey exclaims in outrage.
‘This is a matter of honour. We’ve held the duc for years; my own father-in-law was his jailer at Sterborough.
We’re not going to release him just because someone has convinced a lad of eighteen that he can bring a lasting peace.
He thinks he’ll use – what? – a dove, where a sword failed his father? ’
‘Is this why they took the duc from my father’s custody?’ I ask. ‘Was this the plan all along? Who put this idea into Henry’s head?’
‘Cardinal Beaufort,’ Bolingbroke answers instantly.
‘Who else? He wants to create a great divide between you, my lord and lady, and the bastard Beaufort line. He wants to capture the king from your influence. He hopes to bribe him with a peace with France. And since Beaufort is chief moneylender to the royal treasury, he would be the first to benefit from peace and repayments.’
‘His fortune is fraudulent,’ my husband complains. ‘Drawn from the English Church when he is a cardinal of Rome.’
Everyone ignores the old complaint.
‘A peace treaty means the great victories in France will be forgotten,’ Somerset points out. ‘The heroism of the late king and your recent victories will be forgotten, Your Grace.’
‘“Who lets their lord be treated with such shameful contempt by a low-born cleric?”’ I quote the old king, Henry II. ‘Can’t we just kill the cardinal, like Thomas Becket?’
My husband laughs, but Roger Bolingbroke gives me a long, slow look. ‘The cardinal is not the problem, my lady. If he were killed, we’d only see another favourite in the ascendant – someone like William de la Pole. Our problem is not whose hand holds the pen, but the pen itself.’
‘What d’you mean?’ my husband asks.
I give a minute shake of my head to warn Bolingbroke to go no further.
He understands at once. ‘I mean that the king’s too young to argue with seasoned men, and he agrees with whomever has his ear,’ Bolingbroke says smoothly.
‘We can’t always be at court!’ my husband exclaims. ‘And since the business with Owen Tudor, the king doesn’t trust me as he used to do. I can’t control him. He’d not be seeking peace if I had the managing of him.’
The table is silent. Peace with France means the loss of English lands, and public shame.
It is unthinkable. We have spent so much wealth and lost so many lives that we cannot simply withdraw.
The king cannot be allowed to make these great decisions; he is – as Bolingbroke says – a pen that anyone can write with.
‘Can’t you teach him?’ I ask Somerset. ‘Can’t you control him? Can’t you at least frighten him about this? He’s terrified of failing his father and losing his legacy.’
‘I’ve got little weight against his great-uncle, and I won’t keep my post if I am unkind to him.’
‘He’s a young fool,’ I say despairingly. ‘When’s he ever going to grow up?’
Bolingbroke gives me that thoughtful look again, and I know we are both thinking: he is growing up – that is the very problem. He is growing up and listening to other advisors and forming his own opinions. The question is not ‘when is he going to grow up?’ but rather ‘when is he going to die?’.